With a nonchalant shrug, Wulfgar brought Regis swinging down from his shoulders and set him on the ground. The halfling moaned and rushed to a pile of grass, not wanting to get mud all over his new boots.
'Ye think ye can lift it?' Bruenor asked Wulfgar as the huge man joined him by the wagon. Without a word, without even putting down his magnificent warhammer Aegis-fang, Wulfgar grabbed the wagon and pulled hard. The mud slurped loudly in protest, grabbing and clinging, but in the end it could not resist, and the wheel came free of the soupy ground.
The two guards, after a moment of disbelief, found handholds and similarly pulled, hoisting the wagon even higher. Down to hands and knees went Bruenor, setting his bent back under the axle right beside the wheel. 'Go ahead and set the durned thing,' he said and then he groaned as the weight came upon him.
Wulfgar took the wheel from the struggling merchant and pulled it into line, then pushed it more securely into place. He took a step back, took up Aegis-fang in both hands, and gave it a good whack, setting it firmly. Bruenor gave a grunt from the suddenly shifting weight, and Wulfgar moved to lift the wagon again, just a few inches, so that Bruenor could slip out from under it. Master Camlaine inspected the work, turning about with a bright smile and nodding his approval.
'You could begin a new career, good dwarf and mighty Wulfgar,' he said with a laugh. 'Wagon repair.'
'There is an aspiration fit for a dwarven king,' Drizzt remarked, coming over with Catti-brie and Regis. 'Give up your throne, good Bruenor, and fix the carts of wayward merchants.'
They all had a laugh at that, except for Wulfgar, who simply seemed detached from it all, and for Regis, still fretting over his muddy boots.
'You are far out from Ten Towns,' Camlaine noted, 'with nothing to the west. Are you leaving Icewind Dale once more?'
'Briefly,' Drizzt replied. 'We have business in the south.'
'Luskan?'
'Beyond Luskan,' the drow explained. 'But we will indeed be going through that city, it would seem.'
Camlaine brightened, obviously happy to hear that bit of news. He reached to a jingling purse on his belt, but Drizzt held up a hand, thinking it ridiculous that the man should offer to pay.
'Of course,' Camlaine remarked, embarrassed, remembering that Bruenor Battlehammer was indeed a dwarven king, wealthy
beyond anything a simple merchant could ever hope to achieve. 'I wish there was some way I … we, could repay you for your help. Or even better, I wish that there was some way I could bribe you into accompanying us to Luskan. I have hired fine and able guards, of course,' he added, nodding to the two men. 'But Icewind Dale remains a dangerous place, and friendly swords-or warhammers or axes-are always welcomed.'
Drizzt looked to his friends and, seeing no objections, nodded. 'We will indeed travel with you out of the dale,' he said.
'Is your mission urgent?' the scrimshaw merchant asked. 'Our wagon has been dragging more than rolling, and our team is weary. We had hoped to repair the wheel and then find a suitable campsite, though there yet remain two or three hours of daylight.'
Drizzt looked to his friends and again saw no complaints there. The group, though their mission to go to the Spirit Soaring and destroy Crenshinibon was indeed vital, was in no great hurry. The drow found a campsite, a relatively high bluff not so far away and they all settled down for the night. Camlaine offered his new companions a fine meal of rich venison stew. They passed the meal with idle chatter, with Camlaine and his four companions doing most of the talking, stories about problems in Bremen over the winter, mostly, and about the first catch of the prized knucklehead trout, the fish that provided the bone material for the scrimshaw. Drizzt and the others listened politely, not really interested. Regis, however, who had lived on the banks of Maer Dualdon and had spent years making scrimshaw pieces of his own, begged Camlaine to show him the finished wares he was taking to Luskan. The halfling poured over each piece for a long while, studying every detail.
'Ye think we'll be seeing them giants this night?' Catti-brie asked Drizzt quietly, the two moving off to the side of the main group.
The drow shook his head. 'The one who happened upon the tracks turned back for the mountains,' he said. 'Likely, he was merely checking the route. I had feared that he then went in pursuit of the wagon, but since Camlaine and his crew were not so far away, and since we saw no other sign of any behemoth, I do not expect to see him.'
'But he might be bringing trouble to the next wagon along,' Catti-brie reasoned.
Drizzt conceded the point with a nod and a smile, a look that grew more intense as he and the beautiful woman locked stares. There had been a notable strain between them since the return of Wulfgar, for in the six years of Wulfgar's absence, Drizzt and Catti-brie had forged a deeper friendship, one bordering on love. But now Wulfgar, who had been engaged to marry Catti-brie at the time of his apparent death, was back, and things between the drow and the woman had become far more complicated.
Not at this moment, though. For some reason that neither of the friends could understand, for this one second, it was as if they were the only two people in all the world, or as if time had stopped all around them, freezing the others in a state of oblivion.
It didn't last, not more than a brief moment, for a commotion at the other side of the encampment drew the two apart. When she looked past Drizzt, Catti-brie found Wulfgar staring at them hard. She locked eyes with the man, but again, it was only for a moment. One of Camlaine's guards standing behind Wulfgar, called to the group, waving his arms excitedly.
'Might be that our giant friend decided to show its ugly face,' Catti-brie said to Drizzt. When they joined the others, the guard was pointing out toward another bluff, this one an oozing mud mound pushed up like a miniature volcano by the shifting tundra.
'Behind that,' the guard said.
Drizzt studied the mound intently; Catti-brie pulled Taulmaril, the Heartseeker bow, from her shoulder and set an arrow.
'Too small a pimple for a giant to hide behind,' Bruenor insisted, but the dwarf clutched his axe tightly as he spoke.
Drizzt nodded his agreement. He looked to Catti-brie and to Wulfgar alternately, motioning that they should cover him. Then he sprinted away, picking a careful and quiet path that brought him right to the base of the mound. With a glance back to ensure that his friends were ready, the drow skipped up the side of the mound, his twin scimitars drawn.
And then he relaxed, and put his deadly blades away, as a man, a huge man wearing a wolf-skin wrap, came out around the base into plain sight.
'Kierstaad, son of Revjak,' Catti-brie remarked.
'Following his hero,' Bruenor added, looking up at Wulfgar, for it was no secret to any of them, or to any of the barbarians of Icewind Dale, that Kierstaad idolized Wulfgar. The young man had even stolen Aegis-fang and followed the companions along when they had gone out onto the Sea of Moving Ice to rescue Wulfgar from the demon, Errtu. To Kierstaad, Wulfgar symbolized the greatness that the tribes of Icewind Dale might achieve and the greatness that he, too, so desired.
Wulfgar frowned at the sight.
Kierstaad and Drizzt exchanged a few words, then both moved back to the main group. 'He has come for a word with Wulfgar,' the drow explained.
'To beg for the survival of the tribes,' Kierstaad admitted, staring at his barbarian kin.
'The tribes fare well under the care of Berkthgar the Bold,' Wulfgar insisted.
'They do not!' Kierstaad replied harshly, and the others took that as their cue to give the two men some space. 'Berkthgar understands the old ways, that is true,' Kierstaad went on. 'But the old ways do not offer the hope of anything greater than the lives we have known for centuries. Only Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, can truly unite the tribes and strengthen our bond with the folk of Ten Towns.'
'That would be for the better?' Wulfgar asked skeptically.
'Yes!' Kierstaad replied without hesitation. 'No longer should any tribesman starve because the winter is difficult. No longer should we be so completely dependent upon the
caribou herd. Wulfgar, with his friends, can change our ways … can lead us to a better place.'
'You speak foolishness,' Wulfgar said, waving his hand and turning from the man. But Kierstaad wouldn't let
